In the
Quenta Silmarillion as
Tolkien himself wrote it (see
The Lost Road And Other Writings, and for later emendations,
The War of the Jewels), JRRT describes the wanderings of
Felagund and
Turgon, noting that Turgon went alone into hidden
places, found the secret vale and returned to Nivrost.
And the very next paragraph begins:
(QS section 102)
"And even while Turgon and Felagund were wandering abroad, Morgoth . . ."
made trial of the
Noldor's strength and starts what became known as the Dagor Aglareb. So. Does this at least possibly mean that the Dagor Aglareb battle started, and maybe ended, while Turgon was still wandering?
Hmm.
But here we have the Annals too, and especially
the Grey Annals, which illustrates that in SY 53 Turgon found the hidden vale, and that the Daglor Aglareb began in SY 60, which is notably later of course.
And for the constructed Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien chose the introduction of the Dagor Aglareb from the Grey Annals, not from JRRT's Quenta Simarillion. The Grey Annals begins rather:
"Here Morgoth, believing the reports of his spies that the lords of the Eldar were wandering abroad with little thought of war . . ."
So what's the point of this post? What does it add? Nothing really. Although I've wondered for some time if JRRT meant to do "stuff" like this given the different traditions -- unless of course, I'm the only one who thinks QS (again taken by itself) at least raises the question of where Turgon might have been when this battle began.
In the
Lay of Leithian for example,
Maglor himself is also cast into the sea, while in QS he casts the Silmaril of course. Revision or "purposed inconsistency" between traditions?
I don't know 🐾